Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I don't how people say there is no evidence of ancient mushroom use, and therefore there was none.
You can't conclude if it did or didn't happen, just that we don't have the record for it.
I don't really think that's how it works in archeology......
I think most
serious archeologists amd historians work under the assumption that "Absence of evidence
is evidence of absence" and it stays like that untill evidence is procured.
Everything else falls under the field of "speculations and musings", guesswork, as it were.
That's how science works! opposed to religion which is based on "faith".
I know, wouldn't it just be romantic to imagine cloaked druids in the pale light of the full moon, imbibing psychedelic magical mushroom concoctions while chanting praise to mother earth.
Just because the past doesn't fit our own romantic ideas of how we would have liked it to have been, does'nt make fantasy and wishful thinking truth.
The celts, they didn't live that long ago. in brittain celtic culture prevailed from 500 BC to maybe 500 AD.
We know a lot about them. We know what they ate, which language they spoke, how they were dressed. We know all about their religion and what they called their gods. How they organized their societies etc.etc.
Although the didn't use any form of writting, we have first hand written accounts of their society and how they lived, written by romans and other foreigners who did have a writting system at the time.
I'm sure we would have known had they used mushroms as an entheogen.
So how would we know?
We would have known for the very same reasons that archeologists specializing in ancient indian societies like the maya indians know that did use entheogens.
I'm talking evidence like this:
Or even better this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xochipilli
proof of the Aztec's use of various entheogens.
or this:
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/mindandspirit/teonanacatl.shtml
Xochipilli:
Or how about that pot full of 3000 years old mescaline that Shulgin talks about, found in some cave in north america....
Show me factual physical evidence of the celts using mushrooms as an entheogen! were is it? I don't see it.
Sure, you can speculate and make far fetched allegories from their myths, (like that book about irish soma8)) but fact is, had magic mushrooms held a special place for the celts (and the vikings too) I'm sure they would have been a part of their myths as them selves, as "mushrooms".
There would have been a mushroom god. Mushrooms in their ornaments and tapestries. Mushroom god figures would have been unearthed aswell. Surely.
So, some people will say "how could they not know of magic musrooms?" Well, I wonder that too. The thing is, I think we sometimes exaggerate the knowldge they would have had of plants. For instance, the indians of the rain forest who use ayahuasca didn't know that it was mimosa hostilis which was the crucial ingredient, they call/called banisteriopsis caapi ayahusca vine, they consider that the main ingredient. Not mimosa hostilis.
I think many places cultures have existed without knowing or using any of the entheogenic plants around them.
Now, the neolithic people of brittain, that's another story. We are now looking 5000 years back. There's a lot we don't know about these people. We know what they ate and how they were dressed. But we don't know the language they spoke or what they called themselves! We don't know what they called their gods, we only have an idea that they were sun worshippers maybe, and that the 2 solstices of the year was a very special holy day for them. These were the people who built the first stonehenge.
Is it plausible some of these people knew of, and used, magic musrooms? Sure, it's plausible.
I still think though, that we would have found some small statues of mushrooms, or something similar. Just some kind of indication that they used, mushrooms.
By the way, Webbykevin, far from everything on Erowid is factual, just saying.